


Q & A with Owlet Re: The Infinite Coffee & Protection Detail series

by MusingsOnBuckyBarnes, owlet



Series: Infinite Coffee and Protection Detail [7]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, How in the world am I supposed to tag this thing, Owlet answers some questions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-04-07 14:48:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14083284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MusingsOnBuckyBarnes/pseuds/MusingsOnBuckyBarnes, https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlet/pseuds/owlet
Summary: Musings asked me some questions about ICaPD! I answered them.





	Q & A with Owlet Re: The Infinite Coffee & Protection Detail series

**Author's Note:**

> As long as they don't get too out of hand, I'll try to keep up with comments on this, if y'all have more questions. I hope you enjoy a small peak behind the curtain. (Please forgive any weirdnesses in numbering)
> 
> Many thanks to MusingsOnBuckyBarnes for her patients with my long delays between emails
> 
> People have kindly asked where they can find my original works. I try to keep an updated list at http://www.virginiamohlere.com

Herein is a question and answer session about Owlet’s Bucky Barnes fic series _The Infinite Coffee & Protection Detail_, with Owlet answering questions from MusingsOnBuckyBarnes.

 

 

  * _How did_ This, You Protect _come about?_



 

After my third time seeing the movie [ _Captain America: The Winter Soldier_ ], I thought it would be fun to write a one-shot about how obnoxious it would be to only partially remember and have to look after Steve.

 "Oh great," says I, "I can practice writing humor."

 Hundreds of thousands of words later: what even is my life.

  

  * _From your comments as you were writing_ This, You Protect _, you did not set out to write such a long fic or a series, but you kept having more ideas and tangents and loved writing Grumpy Bucky?_



 

Accurate! It really did just take over my brain.

  

  * _Now that the main stories in the series are done, after you have a well-earned rest and work on your other writing and poems, are any one shots likely in due course for the IC &PD?_



 

Mmmmmmaaaaaaaybe. I have notes for a few, that take Steve & Barnes out to the end of their lives, but I hesitate to commit, because I need to focus on my original stuff for now.

 

 

**_BUCKY BARNES:_ **

  * _Coffee addict (did he like it in his old life?) and quick to get back to personal grooming (he was a metrosexual before it was popular)._



 

In my mind, coffee: no – the Bucky-Person drank coffee for warmth & caffeine, but I do picture him as pretty dang vain, until his time under Zola’s “tender care” broke him.

  

  * _What appealed to you about Bucky? What did you learn about him when writing this?_



 

Initially, in _Winter Soldier_ , I immediately latched onto this character who was set up to be remorseless & relentless, but who was confused in a way he didn’t understand by that *face.* In the fight on the helicarrier, you know his handlers would’ve been incensed by his hesitation, when he was obviously standing there thinking, “Okay, asshole: input me some data so I can determine just what kind of irritant you are.”

  

  * _Where did you get the idea for the Mission and the Briefing?_



 

You see the Briefing in _Winter Soldier_ , in the memory flashes during the bank vault scene. Mission just erupted into my head out of this sense that there are parts of him HYDRA never tore down.

  

  * _The climax of_ This, You Protect _– when did you decide that sheep pants would help save the day?_



 

It was one of those beautiful surprises that happen when you make stuff, and I cried all over my notebook.

  

  * _Bucky’s recovery – a slow, realistic process with some setbacks, pain and humor: learning how to open up to others, to get used to physical contact again eventually, how he helps himself and lets others in, safe spots, good things list, reading, long baths, personal care, baking, sheep pants, coffee, helping others and much more._



 

There have been a couple of times when a really small thing has saved my life. Everyone’s small lifesaving thing is different. Barnes’s are PJs, baking, and concrete assistive actions.

  

  * _What I love particularly about this Bucky is how others are drawn to him like Steve was as his true, kind self is able to start emerging again, and how his involvement with those people affects them in turn, like the Avengers interacting with each other in new ways (e.g. the ice cream tasting) and them getting to meet the Olds, which is beneficial all around._



 

People who don’t recognize how valued they are is a trope I never, ever, ever get tired of. We’re all stuck in our meat bodies, and we see all the messy bits in the inside (my best friend says, “Oh Virginia, you will never irritate anyone as much as you irritate yourself”), and we forget that there exist people who just LIKE us, and that that’s enough. I’ll be writing about that my whole life.

  

**_STEVE:_ **

 

  * _The readers find out in this series that Steve tends to cheat at card games and has been doing so for a long time. Is that because it was the only edge he had when he was sick and frail and tired of being underestimated & he can’t or doesn’t want to break the habit now? _



 

Steve’s a snotball and a contrarian. In my head, he learned to cheat from the women in the Star-Spangled Man show, because they liked to fleece guys who were looking to get the women drunk & take advantage of them. So to him, it’s both a habit and a tool to annoy jerks. Also, he thinks it’s funny to be Captain America, Cheater At Cards. Because the one thing other than Bucky that has always been a constant in his life is people underestimating him/trying to define him by one thing (illness/size vs the costume & shield).

 

  * _And why does he cheat against LYDIA (which is asking her to serve his ass to him on a platter!)? Does he have a death wish?_



 

He recognizes a similar level of sarcasm in her and thinks it’s hilarious to try to fool her and then get walloped by her.

  

  * _What things did you discover about Steve along the way?_



 

The cheating at cards thing, which was a throwaway line in the first chapter where I referenced it and then grew in the back corner of my mind like a “volunteer tomato” in a compost heap until it became A Thing. Writing _“Truth, Justice, and the Cheating Cheater Way”_ was SO fun.

 It was important to me to give Steve a temper and a wide impetuous streak, which I felt both _Avengers_ and _Age of Ultron_ TOTALLY got wrong about him. Except that we pretend _Age of Ultron_ doesn’t exist.

  

  * _In_ A Chance to Try Bravery _, we get to see Bucky and his behavior from Steve’s perspective, including that Bucky talks out loud to himself, seemingly without realizing he’s doing so. How often does Bucky do that, or does it vary/lessen as time goes on? And what things does Bucky ramble to Steve and others about when high on medication after the robot fight?_



 

At the beginning, he talks to himself out loud a LOT. There are some hints about that in the text. Over time, that does lessen, except when he’s stressed, which makes him mutter pretty constantly.

Doped-up Barnes is verbally affectionate and has a little bit of the Bucky-person’s Brooklyn twang.

 

 

**_TONY:_ **

 

Look, I HATE what _Civil War_ did to Tony. There is too much in Barnes’s history for Tony to IDENTIFY with. Tony's arc in _Iron Man_ \- capture, body modification, his tech being stolen for nefarious use - has similar touch points to Barnes's story.

Also, for pity’s sake, do we believe for one second that Pepper didn’t make him go to therapy? We do not.

 

 

**_PEPPER:_ **

 

I am not a Gwyneth Paltrow fan, so it surprised the hell out of me how much affection I developed for Pepper approximately 5 words after she popped up in _This, You Protect_. I just loved writing her, because she’s so dang together and sensible.

 

  ** _MARIA:_**

 

It just made me cackle to set her up as the Alpha Badass. I love her.

  

**_SAM:_ **

 

I’m not going to go back and rewrite, but if I did, I would put in more Sam. Sam’s IMPORTANT. He’s the voice of Real People who go through similar crap to Steve & Barnes and have to deal with it all using Real People methods. He’s what it looks like when you make it to the other side of the wringer – his compassion is deep and wide, but he’s not a martyr and his energy isn’t endless.

 

 

**_NATASHA:_ **

 

I feel like there’s a heft to Natasha that I don’t even know about in my own fictional universe. She’s like Sam – a picture of what it looks like to Survive Some Shit, with more broken-off edges than Sam has. She carries a lot of burdens that she’ll never tell anyone about.

 

 

_**CLINT:** _

 

Truly a poetry nerd.

 

 

_**JARVIS:** _

_The helpful busybody (from better surveillance equipment, to books and lubricants!)_

 

I really enjoyed writing JARVIS, because it was cool to think about a being that was omnipresent and largely non-judgmental. I felt like I had to be careful not to use JARVIS too much or it’d turn out to be a deus ex machina.

 

 

**_CAT ELEANOR:_ **

 

My own personal Cat Eleanor, who was similarly judgy and protective, was a grey tabby named Boadicea (Boadie) whom I collected as a very ill stray kitten and who lived with me for 13 years. She liked to eat her dinner from a plate on the table and was a terrible stealer of French fries.

 Sidebar: I still have her ashes in a bag in my sock drawer, because what the heck am I supposed to do with them?

 

 

**_THOR:_ **

 

Thor’s compassion & wisdom caught me off guard every time he showed up, even though I was *trying* to remember that he’s powerful and practically immortal. But he outdid my ideas for him.

 

 

**_THE OLDS:_ **

 

I guess in some parallel universe that I’m channeling, they must be real people, because they popped fully formed into my head like a trio of hilarious Athenas. Esther has a couple of great-nieces on the West Coast, and Ollie has a few distant step-ish younger relatives from his de facto late husband’s side of the family. Functionally, they are each other’s family.

 

 

**_THE CARP, TOSHIRO HAYASHI, AND KAZUE:_ **

 

Based in part on Sushi Gin in Lawrence, Kansas, where I once had a delicious and fun solo meal at the sushi bar, and Masa’s Sushi and Robata Bar in Spring, Texas, whose nabeyaki udon I’m crazy for.

 

 

**_THE COFFEE BAR AND KATIE:_ **

 

I mentioned her briefly in _Team-Building Exercises_ as if she were important, so then I had to create her for _The Long Road Begins at Home_. She was a bit of a conundrum until I thought of making her one of the victims of the Chitauri attack.

 

 

**_THE ANTI-VALENTINE’S NO TOUCH CLUB_ **

  * _What were its origins?_



 

Honestly I just wanted to write more Hill, because I surprised myself with how much I liked writing her, and I knew she’d hate Valentine’s Day as much as Barnes. From there, it was a matter of thinking who else would hate it and then add Steve, because of all his “whither thou goest” vibe.

  

  * _How do you picture the next Valentine’s Day meeting of that club, since two of the members are now bonking each other every chance they get?_



 

That’s not until the NEXT year. And they spend the whole time very purposely not touching one another until they’re cross-eyed and jump each other in the elevator. Hill grumps at them a lot.

 

 

**_THE HAIR CLUB:_ **

 

It was important to me that the women of the Tower be one another’s support group in the midst of all that testosterone. One of the things that I enjoyed about writing _Team-Building Exercises_ was that it was vignettes that appeared out of thin air without any explanation.

 

… That being said, it made sense to me that the women’s sense of ease with one another would draw Barnes in just like Esther did. He has no idea how much he lurked and stared at them before they invited him over. Once she Got It, Pepper’s natural caretaker tendencies kicked in, and Barnes was in. Pepper is a Fixer.

  

  * _Present tense isn’t often used all the way through a long fic. I think the only time I’ve used it in a fic was when I gave the POV character amnesia, and present tense felt right, as he was in the current moment and it was all he had, with no memories to fall back on. But you used it so well that it suits and isn’t jarring. What led you to decide on present tense?_



 

There’s no other option for that character, in my mind. Barnes experiences everything with almost complete immediacy, and present tense was the only way to convey that.

  

  * _Are Bucky and Steve likely to get their own cat at some stage?_



 

Yes.

  

  * _YES!!!! Do you have a name in mind for it? And does it love Bucky more than it loves Steve?_



 

I don't want to say anything more about their cat, in case I write that part!

 

 

  * _When will the public find out about Bucky being alive, and when will they find out about Bucky and Steve being together?_



 

I have no head canons for these questions. _Miracle on Park Avenue_ is not part of _Infinite Coffee_ , though.

 

 

  * _It was interesting that you released Steve and Bucky getting together in_ Advanced Happiness Skills _before you did_ The Long Road Begins at Home _fic. Did the muse direct you to write and release it early?_



 

I tried really hard not to write _Long Road_ – I knew it would eat up acres of time, and I wanted to be done after _Advanced Happiness_. But it got to the point that I had to write notes or have my head explode, and eventually I had so many dang notes that I figured I’d better type the damn things up.

 

 

  * _So, you actually started writing_ Team-Building Exercises _as a standalone instead of as a teaser for_ The Long Road Begins at Home?



 

Yes, I really didn't intend to go any farther than that.

 

 

  * _And at what point in the series did you realize that it would become Stucky?_



 

Oh gosh, I guess it was always in the background, from the early chapters of _This, You Protect_. But it was a long time before I thought I’d actually write that part.

 

 

  * _Did anything change due to fan comments? What went off in directions that you hadn’t planned on in the plotting stage? What things got left out?_



 

There’s a funny bit about Barnes freaking that Steve will drown in the reflecting pool in the National Mall, until he discovers that it’s only about 18 inches deep.

There was one small detail that I put in because of a fan comment, but I’m sorry to say that I can’t remember what it was.

“Planned on in the plotting stage” … uh.

Um.

Er.

I wrote this whole thing by the seat of my pants.

 

  * _It can be fun and fraught to do a series, as there is a lot to juggle and things to seed in to set up plots and developments for further down the track. How did you keep tabs on what needed to happen when?_



 

Gotta be magic. I mean, I held the whole thing in my head for years and could see it as clear as day. It crowded out many other things.

 

 

  * _What is your writing process like, or was it different for this series?_



 

I write and tinker almost daily, but I’ve found that my best pieces tend to be the ones that build up like pressure in my head and fall out all at once. My Star Wars fic, _Generational Mistakes_ , is over 17,000 words that literally came out all at one time, starting around 1:00 am, when it woke me up. I had to take the day off work, and by the time I had the whole draft out on paper (hand written!), I was literally crying from the pain in my hand.

That’s an extreme example, of course, usually it’s more like the beginning of a thing blooms, and sections build up until they attain enough gravity to ooze out in blobs. I generally have to start out writing by hand until I pick up some inertia and can switch to typing, though I also do a lot of editing in the first typing pass if a whole piece is hand-written.

I write very badly to self-imposed deadlines and very well to feeling like I Owe Someone, so the reader comments really propelled me along throughout the whole series.

  

  * _The fics have really shown the therapeutic power of cooking, as well as different recipes, especially in the comments section._



 

There is not enough I can say about the comments section. It took on a life of its own in a way that I would not even have imagined – not just the screaming and the recipes, which were great, but the way people jumped in to comfort and support one another. It is really beautiful, and I’m beyond grateful, and so proud of all of them and to be a part of them.

I’m sincerely humbled by and thankful to all the comments, but especially those from people who found comforting or useful bits in Barnes’s recovery. Even if this one life isn’t the only one we get, it’s the only one we *remember*, and damaging shit is a pure fact of existence. To have provided material help to even one suffering person (much less the dozens of who’ve reached out) makes a strong place in my own heart. I have a concrete thing that I can look at with my own eyeballs and say for real and for sure that I Did Well and I Helped. That gives a human life ballast. It’s an honor.

I started _Long Road_ at a time when I was feeling super demoralized about my original works, and the life it made for itself in fandom still just knocks me over. If y’all were going to have that much faith in me, I figure I’d better lift up my head and have faith in myself. Thank you for that.

 

 

xXx

 

This Q&A will also be available on our Tumblrs:

https://vmohlere.tumblr.com/

https://musings-on-bucky-barnes.tumblr.com/

 


End file.
